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RE: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] Eclipse 4.0 (was Eclipse ProjectAnnouncement and Project Review Schedule)

Doug,
      I *know* that we're all trying to do the right thing here. Really. I
also know that we *all* believe that the level of communication and
community participation that we are striving for in this is orders of
magnitude more than what you have seen from the platform team in the past.

      So, like everyone who is learning a new way to work, what we
absolutely need from the community is positive re-inforcement when we get
things right, and *gentle* <g> chastisement when we mess up. Your message
below is perfect, in fact, since it simply points out that the way e4 has
been talked about so far has confused things more than it has helped. I'll
make another attempt at clearing that up in a sec (and I'm sure you'll tell
me if I fail), but I want to make one other point first.

      I care deeply about Eclipse. I have been fighting for its success
since day zero. When I look at Eclipse.org today, I am truly humbled by the
sheer magnitude of the successes we (all) have built, and I really do GET
IT that it is the community that has generated that success. So I'm going
to be completely open here: I am _royally_pissed_ that something so
critical to all our successes (i.e. the Eclipse SDK) is being built by a
very small team, most of whom come from one company. There are exactly two
things that I believe are threatening the continued success of Eclipse
right now:

      - lack of a diverse, growing committer community on the SDK

      - a codebase that is so constrained by history that it can't respond
to a rapidly changing computing environment

Addressing those two things is *exactly* why the e4 effort was started. No
hidden agendas. No extra direction from IBM to solve some new business
problem. Nothing else. So what it all comes down to is this: If someone
sees us doing something that doesn't look like it matches one of those
goals, absolutely speak up! But, for God's sake, give us the benefit of a
doubt. We will make mistakes, but they will be honest ones. For my part, I
personally commit to making e4 be the kind of community driven project we
all want.

      Anyway, I've ranted enough -- let me get back to your post...

      The only code that exists that is related to e4, is a couple of
cool(ish) demos (neither of which is called "e4") that we built to help us
figure out whether some ideas we had about new directions were valuable or
not -- As Steve says, "We think with our fingers". I'd been planning to
show that code at EclipseCON, because I also believe that demos speak
louder than powerpoint, but we really only had them in publishable shape in
the last couple of weeks. In retrospect, what we should have done was just
dump them in some existing place in CVS and be done with it, but we thought
that making them more visible was important. The idea was that by building
a separate component for them, they would both be easy to find and, when we
did get the e4 effort rolling, they would be easy to move to another home
(assuming that made sense).

      Obviously, we misjudged the implications of the proposal that went
out. If I had know that it was going to have the impact that it did I would
have spent more time wordsmithing it when Steve showed it to me. I
apologize for the confusion that it caused. [Heck, when I went back and
re-read it, *I* thought it was bogus.]

      I do believe that there will need to be a *new* shared area to work,
once e4 actually starts to happen. My current theory is that the best place
for that would be as a new incubator project unto itself, under the Eclipse
Project, with the initial committer list being *everyone* who wants to get
involved. I've started putting together a proposal for the creation of such
a project, but in any case, that's not going to happen until after
EclipseCON and I'm happy to discuss other suggestions.

McQ.



                                                                           
             "Schaefer, Doug"                                              
             <Doug.Schaefer@wi                                             
             ndriver.com>                                               To 
             Sent by:                  "eclipse.org-architecture-council"  
             eclipse.org-archi         <eclipse.org-architecture-council@e 
             tecture-council-b         clipse.org>                         
             ounces@xxxxxxxxxx                                          cc 
             g                                                             
                                                                   Subject 
                                       RE:                                 
             03/06/08 21:12            [eclipse.org-architecture-council]  
                                       Eclipse 4.0 (was Eclipse            
                                       ProjectAnnouncement and Project     
             Please respond to         Review Schedule)                    
             "eclipse.org-arch                                             
             itecture-council"                                             
             <eclipse.org-arch                                             
             itecture-council@                                             
               eclipse.org>                                                
                                                                           
                                                                           




Thanks, Jochen. Communication about this is critical. Unfortunately you
even started this e-mail by calling "e4" the next version of the Eclipse
platform and I'm still stuck that "e4" is the prototype you are
proposing. I'm sure we all have different visions of what the next major
version of Eclipse needs to be and I look forward to participating in
the process that ensures as many of those needs are met as possible.

Doug S.

-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Jochen Krause
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 8:19 PM
To: eclipse.org-architecture-council; eclipse.org-board; Mike Wilson;
Steve Northover
Subject: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] Eclipse 4.0 (was Eclipse
ProjectAnnouncement and Project Review Schedule)

Dear Board and Architecture Council members,

I would like to clarify the situation around "e4", the next version of
the Eclipse platform, as there is a discussion going on about an "e4"
incubator project component.

There has been a presentation to the Eclipse board about moving the
Eclipse platform to a new level for Eclipse 4.0 in December 2007.
Defining the scope of Eclipse 4.0 has also been one of the Eclipse 3.4
plan item.

The platform team has recently requested to create a new component
within the Eclipse incubator project to make their technology
evaluations available to the community. This has been perceived as a
"decision" about the next version of the platform by some readers - and
the wording of the component proposal can easily be interpreted this
way. But this is not at all the intention of this component. The
component is just about sharing code.

The Eclipse platform and the RAP team have met to see if they could work
together on e4. We saw our meeting as a part of the "pre-proposal-phase"
of a new project. We have planned to join forces and will announce
shortly a proposal for an e4 incubator project, following the Eclipse
guidelines and process. The process has been established to make
projects transparent and help to engage with the community.

And we are serious about it: Everybody is welcome to join, collaborate,
comment or critizise! There is a lot of work to do. We think that we
need to innovate in many areas to retain a leadership position for
Eclipse, and your know how is welcome. EclipseCon will be a great
opportunity to meet and discuss.

It is really good news that some of the processes that many of us
perceive as a burden most of the time have a value. Receiving comments
and concerns about something that is only planned shows that our
processes apply to reality and that the Eclipse community is very vital.

Jochen


-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-architecture-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Schaefer, Doug
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 8:40 PM
To: eclipse.org-planning-council
Cc: eclipse.org-architecture-council
Subject: [eclipse.org-architecture-council] RE: Eclipse
ProjectAnnouncementandProject Review Schedule

You're right, the planning council list may not be the best place,
certainly all the councils and the board itself need to be interested in
this. For the Arch council members, please check full e-mail thread on
the archives page started by Doug Gaff:


http://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/eclipse.org-planning-council/mailli
st.html

Getting back to the "Component" description: "The result was the design
of a new platform "e4", which will be the basis for Eclipse 4.0." By new
platform, did you mean fork? My fear is that this is a likely scenario,
which would make the issues Doug Gaff brought up originally even more
important. If we're going to have two platforms, we'd better have the
processes in place to ensure they get the resourcing necessary to keep
them both alive.

Doug Schaefer.

-----Original Message-----
From: eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Boris Bokowski
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 2:11 PM
To: eclipse.org-planning-council@xxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [eclipse.org-planning-council]
RE:[eclipse.org-membership-at-large] Eclipse Project
AnnouncementandProject Review Schedule


Whoa.  I expected a flamewar on planeteclipse, but not here.

Doug Gaff wrote:
> What is frustrating me about this project proposal

You misread the announcement e-mail.  It is not a project proposal,
merely a new *component* in the existing Eclipse Incubator project.  I
admit that one can easily be confused with the other.

We realized (admittedly, very late) that nobody from the SWT team had
commit rights in the existing Eclipse Incubator project. Creating a new
component in that Incubator project was the fastest way to create a home
for experimental code that we will be demoing at EclipseCon, with write
access to everybody who has been involved so far - people at IBM,
Innoopract, and Code 9.

The key words are "so far" - our hope is to find more people and
companies who would like to work with us on e4.

Could we continue this discussion in a more open forum? The Planning
Council mailing list is not open to everybody; I had to ask nicely to be
added as a subscriber. For example, could a new mailing list be created,
e.g. eclipse-incubator-e4-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx? (I believe we asked for this
as part of the component creation process already.)

Boris

--
Boris Bokowski
Eclipse Platform UI committer
IBM Rational Software, Ottawa Lab

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